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<table width="100%" summary="page for AccountantsAuditorsPct"><tr><td>AccountantsAuditorsPct</td><td style="text-align: right;">R Documentation</td></tr></table>

<h2>Accountants and Auditors in the US 1850-2016</h2>

<h3>Description</h3>

<p>Accountants and auditors as a percent of the US labor
force 1850 to 2016 updating the analysis in Wyatt 
and Hecker (2006).  
</p>


<h3>Usage</h3>

<pre>data(AccountantsAuditorsPct)</pre>


<h3>Format</h3>

<p>a numeric vector of length 30 giving the percent of 
the US labor force in &quot;Accounting and Auditing&quot; each decade 
from 1850 to 2010 except for 1940 plus each year between 
2011 and 2016.  
</p>


<h3>Source</h3>

<p>This is based primarily on data extracted from the 
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPUMS">Integrated 
Public Use Microdata Series</a> on 2018-09-01 with 
the computations documented in a vignette by this 
title in the <code>Ecfun</code> package.  
</p>
<p>This updates the data on Accountants and Auditors in 
in Wyatt and Hecker (2006).  They relied primarily on 
data extracted from the 
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPUMS">Integrated 
Public Use Microdata Series</a>.  I did the same but 
found two problems that seemed to require 
modifications:  
</p>
<p>1.  IPUMS provided no data for 1940.  Wyatt and Hecker 
(2006) used 
<a href="https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1975/compendia/hist_stats_colonial-1970.html">Historical Statistics of the United 
States, Colonial Times to 1970, Bicentennial 
Edition, part 1 (U.S. Department of Commerce, 
Bureau of the Census, 1975)</a> for 1910-1940.  
The current data set uses that source only for 
1040.  
</p>
<p>2.  The IPUMS numbers showed an extreme jump from 
1850 to 1860 followed by an even more extreme 
drop to 1870.  The numbers in Sobek (2006) showed
essentially the same behavior.  Specifically, 
Sobek (2006) estimated the number of accountants 
and auditors in the US in those three years as 700, 
1700, and 1200, and the labor force as 5277000, 
8160800, and 12004200.  These numbers give 
accountants and auditors as 0.013, 0.021, and 0.010 
percent of the labor force, respectively for those 
three years.  These numbers portray an incredible 
increase in the employment of accountants and auditors 
between 1850 and 1860 followed by a shocking decline 
the following decade. If, however, we swap the 1700 
and 1200 between 1860 and 1870, the percentages 
become quite stable: 0.013, 0.015, and 0.014 percent, 
respectively.  
</p>
<p>We use these latter numbers, even thought the 
uncorrected numbers seem more consistent with 
the numbers obtained from IPUMS.  
</p>


<h3>References</h3>

<p><a href="https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1975/compendia/hist_stats_colonial-1970.html">Historical Statistics of the United 
States, Colonial Times to 1970, Bicentennial 
Edition, part 1 (U.S. Department of Commerce, 
Bureau of the Census, 1975)</a>
</p>
<p>Steven Ruggles, Sarah Flood, Ronald Goeken, 
Josiah Grover, Erin Meyer, Jose Pacas, and 
Matthew Sobek (2018) 
<a href="https://doi.org/10.18128/D010.V8.0">IPUMS 
USA: Version 8.0 [dataset]. Minneapolis, MN: 
IPUMS</a>. 
</p>
<p>Matthew Sobek (2006) Chapter Ba. &quot;Labor Occupations&quot; 
in Susan B. Carter, ed., 
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Statistics_of_the_United_States">
Historical Statistics of the United States, 
Cambridge U. Pr.</a>
</p>
<p>Ian D. Wyatt and Daniel E. Hecker (2006) 
<a href="https://www.bls.gov/mlr/2006/03/art3full.pdf">
&quot;Occupational changes during the 20th century&quot;, 
Monthly Labor Review, March 2006, pp. 35-57</a>
</p>


<h3>See Also</h3>

<p><code>Index.Source</code>, <code>Index.Economics</code>, <code>Index.Econometrics</code>, <code>Index.Observations</code></p>


<h3>Examples</h3>

<pre>
data(AccountantsAuditorsPct)
plot(names(AccountantsAuditorsPct), AccountantsAuditorsPct, 
  type='l', log='y', cex.axis=1.8)
# for the version of this contributed to Wikimedia Commons  
</pre>


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